


Samwell Tarly’s Merciless Observations and their Ramifications

by tinymouse



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: First Time, Kissing, M/M, Post - A Game of Thrones, Riding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-05
Updated: 2012-06-05
Packaged: 2017-11-06 22:38:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/424039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinymouse/pseuds/tinymouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Samwell Tarly is fascinated by Jon Snow. Samwell Tarly wants to know Jon Snow from the inside as well as the outside.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Samwell Tarly’s Merciless Observations and their Ramifications

Jon is everything he wants to be. Everything he never was growing up. He’s strong. He’s brave. He’s kind. He’s intelligent. He’s a born leader. He’s Jon Snow. The others admire him, look up to him, listen to him. Take everything he says to heart, would never, never laugh at him. Not like they do Samwell Tarly. 

Quite honestly, he’s at the other end of the spectrum to Jon. He’s a coward. He’s weak. He’s dimwitted. He’s… well… he’s _pudgy_. Even if the commander had told him his ‘extra padding’ would last as long as those stray and fluttering autumn leaves. 

-

Jon is admirable in more ways than one. He walks with a sort of casual elegance Sam hasn’t seen anyone else carry. He walks not like a bastard should - with his shoulders hunched and his eyes down, but with his back straight and his head held high. His body is lean and strong, a weapon in itself without the extended arm of a singing sword. The gleaming addition is a silvery death in itself. He fights like a bird would fight, Sam thinks, as he watches. Darting back and lashing in when his opponent is recovering from their last blow. Moving quickly, decisively, always aware of where every part of his body is.

Swift. Dark. _Deadly._

He’s terrifying. He’s born for this. Sam knows it, feels it in his bones, from the moment Jon had spoken those words; “I always wanted to be a ranger,” he’s been born for this. Born for the hunt. Born to fight. Even if he was still the gentlest soul Samwell had ever met.

Then again; Sam didn’t know many kind souls to prop as a comparison.

-

Jon is beautiful. He’s pale and lean and firm under all those layers, under all that heavy thick wool and fleece and fur, he’s soft edges and unmarked skin that Sam knows wont remain so pale much longer. He’s unexplored skin and flushed fingertips, he’s soft and kind and gentle. 

Sam doesn’t mean it. Doesn’t intend for it to happen. Merely walks past Jon’s quarters at the wrong time. It’s late, he knows it’s late but he also knows Jon isn’t asleep. His fire is lit, and it’s steady glow peeks under the doorway and Samwell only pushes the it open gently, slightly, merely checking to be sure Jon isn’t asleep. 

Jon isn’t asleep.

He’s lying, stretched over his bed, bare, without a stitch on, except for the furs that drape uselessly over his chest. Keeping the cold out, and he has a hand, palming himself, stroking himself where he curves pink and hard up to his stomach with his head tilted back, exposing the long, pale, line of his throat. It looks like something Sam would see in a painting. Those ones of the girls, naked with their plump breasts and full hips, curled hair in striking comparison to their pale skin with red lips just like Jon’s. His tongue darts out to wet his own as he watches, watches Jon’s hips roll languidly up into his fist, and he hears the low sounds slipping from those too-full lips. The desperate sobs that almost make Sam think Jon _needs help._

He only leaves when he feels himself responding to Jon. Escaping back to his quarters filled with shame and disgust at himself. At himself.

Never at Jon Snow.

-

Let it not be known that Samwell stayed a coward. 

Sometimes being brave was a little more than standing firm and holding a blade, even in the midst of stupidity. 

He tries hard after that. Thinks Jon must view him as a friend by now, he has to. He’s laughed with him, smiled at him, sparred with him, taught him. Helped him. But it’s all of those things and more that take them on their boisterous little cloud of almost-warmth to the wall’s makeshift ‘tavern’ that night. 

Samwell is so brave, in fact, that he locks the door after himself as they both enter. Tells Jon he wants to keep the cold out, “Despite how I may look, I get chilly too!” and had taken delight in Jon’s answering grin, the way his eyes crinkled at the corners.

He’s not even sure how it happens. Jon perches upon the bar and Sam settles for one of the old stools that creaks under him, and they drink. Reveling in the warm burn of the alcohol as it wanders down their esophaguses to twirl pleasantly in their stomachs. The stench of it burns Sam’s nostrils and turns his tastebuds numb, he has little more than a mug and a half and drinks them slow. Wants to draw this out - keep Jon for his own while he can. Watches the dark-haired man down two and go for a third with an amused eye.

“I’ve seen it. You know.” Jon says, after a moment. Voice hinged and dragged down at the edges from their liqueur. 

“The snow? I’ve been told it ‘aint nothin’ yet.”

“No. _You.”_

“Pardon?” 

“The way you look at me, when you think I don’t see.” He kicks a leg up, “I do see.”

 _A ranger._ Sam remembers, bitterly.

For a long moment, he says nothing. Briefly wonders if Jon remembers even speaking as he lifts his mug back to his lips for another sip. 

Samwell remembers his promise to himself. Be brave. He thinks. Just be brave.

He draws to his feet. The stool scrapes under him as he pushes it back, and he steps before Jon, just as the mug leaves his lips, and he looks up at Sam. Eyes twinkling, it has to be the alcohol. Never before have Jon’s eyes twinkled. 

“Can I…” He lifts a hand, it hovers absently between them, and he draws in another breath, another anxious breath. “Can… can I... touch…?” and not much more needs to be said because Jon is nodding at him, his smile fading, his eyes fixed on Sam’s plump fingers as they draw near him. 

He only looks away when they touch his skin. His eyes drift closed and Sam sucks in a sharp breath. Fingertips ghosting over the shadowy stubble tinting his jaw, over the pale planes of his cheekbones, down the angular line of his throat, over the pale, pale, skin there that he remembers seeing stretched out, bare (for him) and he presses down further, down to the collar of Jon’s jerkin, the leather feeling wrong and harsh after the smoothness of that skin. Sam gives it an absent tug, loosens the topmost fastening enough to bare the top of Snow’s chest, and for the moment, that’s enough. 

Jon makes a content, soft sound in response to Sam’s wandering hands. He’s so enraptured, so consumed with his need for more that he wriggles his hand free from his other glove - tosses it haphazardly aside, doesn’t care where it lands, and skims his fingers over the firm lines of muscle wound over Jon’s chest. Palms brushing over his pectorals, down his sternum, where - with quivering hands - Samwell tugs the fastenings free, and presses over his abdomen. 

That pale chest seems to arch into him as Jon presses his arms back, braces himself against the bar-top, eyes still closed. Looking - for all the world - just like one of the girls in the whore houses Samwell has walked past too many times.

“Samwell…?”

He only realizes his hands have stopped moving when Jon’s eyes fall open, gazing imploringly into Sam’s own, looking past his exterior, like he always has done, seemingly… into his _soul_ , and Sam feels bare under it. Naked. despite being fully clothed. He huffs something he doesn’t even properly comprehend before his hands resume their gentle exploration, but Jon is more eager to ensure his concentration doesn’t lapse this time. His gloves still cover him to his wrists, and his hands press over the backs of Sam’s, guiding them to his hips, to his trousers, helping him with the knots and shifting forwards so that they fall easily from him. Pool at his boots and Sam can only stare.

Jon is beautiful. Etherial and otherworldly in all the best ways. Soft and perfect to the touch, as soft and perfect as he looks, and his cock stands, pale pink and proud, curved by his hip. It’s all so odd to Samwell. He’s seen Jon as this weapon of deadly proportions. This element that couldn’t be reckoned with, this force of strength. But like this? He was pliant. He was willing. He was submissive under Sam’s calloused touch. 

He’s as gentle as Sam’s always known him to be.

He reaches up, presses his fingers through those dark locks, through that damp-and-cold hair and drags the stool back behind him with the other, settles himself back upon it, and draws Jon into him. Settles him with his thighs bracketing Sam’s. Jon is perfect like _this_. His pale skin is kiss-dimpled with goosebumps, and he trembles somewhat from the cold, and his gaze is heavy, settled upon Sam. Closed in upon him like he’s the only thing in the room. In the universe. As if he’s all he has (and a heavy part of Sam knows that _might_ be true).

Just like that, Jon is inching closer. Tilting his face, eyes sliding closed and then his lips are upon Sam’s. His hands braced upon Sam’s broad shoulders, holding him as if he fears Sam will shove him away and bolt for the frost outside. But he doesn’t. Sam’s hands settle upon Jon’s abdomen, drift lower to his bare hips, press gently, thumbs digging into the hollows of his hipbones, drifting over the oversensitive skin of his cock that has him stiffening and gasping into Sam’s lips. Muscles going rigid under pale skin. 

He breaks their kiss to arch forwards into Sam’s touch, and Sam is utterly powerless to deny him. Closing his hand into a loose fist around Jon, watching him roll his hips forwards into his willing hand, and damn it if that alone isn’t the best thing Sam’s ever seen. 

Things move by in a flurry after that, Sam thinks his alcohol must have kicked in several moments too late because before he knows it they’re using the oil for the lanterns for something he’s never even thought of and he has Jon crying out over his fingers, buried and crooked inside him and then his cock replaces them. Sinks into his delicious heat that makes Samwell never wish to abandon it. To own it and keep it as his own secret, to hide it for as long as he can. To take and _take_ and _own it_ greedily.

He feels better than any whore Sam could ever imagine (and he’s imagined many), he warms him in ways no amount of alcohol, fire, nor furs could, he makes the soles of Samwell’s feet tingle with arousal, his fingertips go numb (or maybe that’s the cold) and Jon’s hands reach back to brace him upon the bar top, to raise him and drop his hips back down upon Sam’s heat and watching him - Sam could do this for hours. Days. Weeks, if it were allowed. The way Jon’s head tips back, the way his kissed-raw lips fall open, the way he fucks himself steadily upon Samwell’s cock is perfect, so perfect that Sam knows it’s not _killing_ that Jon is made for. It’s something else entirely.

His hands close around the sharp curves of Jon’s hips to help him drop down those last few inches and Jon lets out a surprised sound after three steady tugs. Head snapping up, jerking down to where they are joined, as if he expects to see some evidence of the shocking white-hot pleasure there, but Sam gives him another pull and he forgets. He trembles and shakes and Sam holds onto him, touches him, memorizes his skin like an explorer marking points on a map, each corner and curve that he knows will be littered with scars before long because in a place like this one was never truly safe. 

Moments like this were far and few between and the Night’s Watch was no place for affection. No place for hidden moments or secrets. 

But in a place like this, affection was exactly what they each craved. Familiar touch became more like glimmering gold and emeralds. Genuine smiles like diamonds in the rough. 

Jon’s arm slips, he knocks his drink over, the wine spills like blood over the cracked wood, the mug rolls somewhere off to the edge of the bar to clatter to the floor but neither of them notice nor hear it. Too wound through and strung up and tangled in one another to even so much as spare a _thought_ for anything more.

“Sam, S-Sam--” Jon gasps, reaching down between them to grip his cock, hand remaining still, not stroking, not squeezing, just holding and Sam lets him. Watches him with his eyes still filled with that same awe, that same pride as he’s reflected since the first time he settled his eyes upon him.

“You’re gorgeous. D-D’you know that?” He says, lips curling into a similarly awestruck smile as Jon almost grins back, before a particularly sharp press down and he comes between them, hot and wet and in a rush, over the leather of his gloves, stark against his pale skin, over his stomach, over Sam’s trousers, going stiff and rigid and shaking in the circle of Samwell’s arms, before he tips forwards and hands himself over completely. Spasming at each of Sam’s lingering and languid thrusts upward, his oversensitive body wrung out. Then, it’s Sam’s turn. Fingers scrabbling blindly over the pale and perfect expanse of Jon’s back, down to the firm globes of his backside, blunt nails digging into pale flesh as he comes, milks himself, pump after pump inside Jon. Who can only gasp wetly into the curve of his neck. 

A long moment of silence acts as their symphony when they’re done, marked by the beats of their heavy breaths and with the steady baritone of the cracking fire somewhere behind Sam.

“M’cold.” Jon whispers, a moment later. Still lying, slumped, in Sam’s lap.

He shifts up, and Sam slips free with a wet and unpleasant sound. Something odd flickers over Jon’s expression as he slides from Sam, and he half-winces as he bends for his trousers, tugs them swiftly up and ties the fastenings, retrieving his tunic and jerkin and tugging both on, just as Sam tucks himself back into his trousers and draws to his feet, knees weak. 

“Jon?” He says, a moment later.

Jon looks up at him, tugging his cloak back over his broad shoulders, and wiping his glove on the inside of the thick material.

“Will… will you kiss me?” Sam asks, (stammers).

He dares a peek up, and Jon is grinning.

He steps in, an arm goes back around one of Sam’s shoulders, tugs him in for a chaste kiss to the lips. Jon’s are cold, not entirely surprising, Sam thinks. Watches him turn and stride to the door. His steps odd and jerky with an almost limp to them. Sam watches him until the snow swirls out to greet him and steal him back into the night, leaving him wondering if this is something that words will never be able to claim for their own.

-

From then onward, Samwell knows Jon Snow is not built for killing. 

Samwell Tarly knows Jon Snow will take no delight in killing, in seeing blood tint the pure white snow that inks their frozen wasteland. Takes no joy in stealing a life before it’s due to depart, takes no enjoyment from in violence. He’s not made for war. He’s not built to fight. A warrior has no space in his heart for love. For family. For his brothers on the Wall. 

No. Jon Snow was built for something else. Something far greater that Samwell _wants him_ to see. Wants him to understand and take to heart. Something that would perhaps keep them all from losing themselves in this endless white, something that would keep them warm on their icy, black nights.

Jon Snow was built to love.


End file.
